‘Borderlands’ review: video game bust plays like a bot wrote it

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” mutters Cate Blanchett’s bounty hunter at the beginning of Borderlands, the brand new movie take on Gearbox Software’s famed video game series. It’s a line that sounds like it’s been hijacked from another movie (Lethal Weapon, anyone?) – the first of many derivative moments in this messy sci-fi spectacle.

Directed by Eli Roth, the film is already semi-notorious, with shooting wrapping over three years ago, and reshoots took place with Deadpool director Tim Miller taking over from Roth, who was off finishing last year’s enjoyable slasher film Thanksgiving. The patched-together version now lands, boots on the ground, as one of those late-summer blockbusters its hard to care about.

Sporting bright red hair, Blanchett’s Lilith is more than capable, which accounts for why weapons tycoon Atlas (Édgar Ramírez) has come to her for help. His daughter Tiny Tina (Barbie’s Ariana Greenblatt) has gone missing, kidnapped by one of his own soldiers, Roland (Kevin Hart). Atlas wants her back, not least because he believes she is the key to unlocking an intergalactic prism known as The Vault.

With Lilith offered a sizeable chunk of change, she heads off to Pandora, a planet she knows only too well. “She’s dangerous, she’s dirty and she’s definitely a toxic waste dump,” she says, with a little affection in her voice. Looking not unlike Mad Max’s The Wasteland, it’s filled with trash and giant monsters, including vicious-looking Threshers that urinate and excrete in huge volumes.

On Pandora, Blanchett soon locates Roland and the mischievous Tiny Tina, who has no intention of being rescued and loves nothing more than detonating dynamite with triggers hidden inside her toy teddy bears. Also along for the ride is Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), a robot that’s been programmed to help Lilith, and man mountain Krieg (Creed II’s Florian Munteanu).

Together, this ragtag bunch rather resemble the space rangers in Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, a film that really provides the template for Borderlands’ unhinged intergalactic adventures. There’s even the obligatory rock soundtrack to propel things along, including Motörhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’ and Muse’s suitably spaced-out ‘Supermassive Black Hole’. 

The trouble is, Borderlands entirely lacks the charm of Guardians, despite an enjoyably mad ensemble that sees comic actor Hart play it entirely straight and Blanchett go all guns blazing (or flamethrowers blazing in one satisfying sequence). There’s even room for Jamie Lee Curtis to pop up in an extended cameo as a scientist who has connections to Lilith’s own Pandora-related backstory.

One of the big issues comes with Claptrap, a mechanical sidekick with verbal diarrhoea. Rivalling The Phantom Menace’s Jar Jar Binks as one of the most grating characters ever to appear in a movie, he practically spoils every scene he’s in. At least Roth (and Miller) deliver some punchy action sequences, including one great chase through Pandora’s canyons. But as the film lurches into the final third, there’s little emotional sustenance to keep you going. Just one yawn-worthy twist and some dud CGI. Avoid.